If you looked down the musical hit parade for 1955, it was comprised of bland, middle-of-the-road singers like Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Pat Boone, and Doris Day. But then 1956 arrived, and with it a young man by the name of Elvis Presley.

Within the space of just a few, short months, he became a phenomenon. During the year he burst onto the music scene, he had six of the best-selling songs of the year, including: Heartbreak Hotel; Don’t be Cruel; and Hound Dog.

Rock and Roll had arrived; and one man had turned the world of music and entertainment on its head. Thanks to Elvis, the world was “All shook up”.

In a different yet very similar way, history repeated in the UK in 1976. The music charts, yet again, were bland with prog rock bands like Yes and Genesis pumping out concept albums containing songs that lasted for an hour (they probably weren’t that long – They just felt like it). Suddenly, like Elvis had done 20 years before, The Clash, The Damned, and The Sex Pistols arrived to shake up the music scene once again.

You might argue that The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and the first round of hip-hop artists did a very similar thing.

Such revolutions are not confined to music. Think about the switch from radio to TV; the switch from black and white TV to colour; the arrival of the personal computer, the dawning of the Internet age, mobile telephones, smart phones, tablet computers. Factories switched from manual labour to robotic labour.

We saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. As a nation, we surrendered fossil fuels; we cast ourselves adrift from our European Union neighbours; and we saw same-sex marriages move into the mainstream.

In each instance, these marked a paradigm shift; a new direction for humanity, society, business and individual people.

So where is our paradigm shift in the demolition and construction industry? Where is our shake-up? Where’s our Elvis?

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I’d like to tell you a little story about my father-in-law. Back in the mid 1970s, he contracted tuberculosis. No-one was entirely sure, but the doctors suggested he might have picked it up from drinking raw milk when he lived on a farm as a child.

Anyway, as a result of that TB, he initially lost one kidney. Over the course of the next fifty or so years, his remaining kidney gradually ceased to function. For the last year of his life, he was on dialysis.

That loss of kidney function came with side effects. His doctor placed him on a course of water tablets to take care of what he called his “water works”; but those tablets made him constipated. He was prescribed a pill to ease the constipation. Which it did. But it also gave him gout. The doctor prescribed a treatment for his gout. That worked as well. His gout was gone. But he now had what the doctors called “restless leg syndrome”; his legs constantly twitching and spasming, particularly at night. As a result, he couldn’t sleep. The doctor prescribed sleeping tablets. They gave him a good night’s sleep. They also gave him severe, migraine-level headaches. He was offered painkillers to ease the headaches. But they were discovered to counteract his heart medication.

At no point was he summoned to the doctor’s surgery or to the hospital to go back to basics; to treat the original symptoms. Instead, a new layer of medication was used to pave over the cracks.

Doctor after doctor. Pill after pill. Side-effect upon side-effect. My father in law passed away earlier this year. By the time he did so, he was taking 18 tablets each day; the majority of the pills – seemingly – to counteract the effects of another pill.

At this point, you would be fully justified in asking what the Hell my father in law’s medical treatment has to do with anything. Thankfully, the answer to that question is very easy.

Replace my father in law with the demolition and construction industry; and replace all those pills, potions, medicines and lotions with legislation. Remedy upon remedy, each one piled upon the next. Some counteract and contradict; some are there purely to address that side effects of something prescribed previously.

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It’s the snowball effect. That’s what it is. It starts as one small thing. Insignificant. But it grows. In size, in speed. And suddenly, it’s too big and moving too fast to stop.

That’s why you’re sitting there, thinking the unthinkable. Contemplating. Replaying it in your head. Trying to make sense of something that stopped making sense weeks ago.

It’s hard now to see how you got here. Hard to see where your life made that sharp left turn and took you down a dark, untrodden path.

You’d had your highs and lows. Who hasn’t? But this low was a new low. Deeper.

The first thing was the lay‑off. You didn’t see it coming; you were unprepared.

Everything at work had seemed fine. You got on well with your team; your boss seemed pleased. In fact, you’d received a few commendations.

So when redundancies were announced, you thought – you KNEW – you’d be safe. You were too valuable. You’d been there too long.

It didn’t matter. The call, when it came, was impersonal. Distant. No “thank you.” No “best of luck.” No offer of career guidance. You were no longer needed. Discarded.

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I’d like you to imagine that you are a football player. You are good. Very good, in fact. And that is why you’re playing in the English Premier League for a well-respected team. For the sake of this story, let’s say you are a midfield player with Nottingham Forest.

As a player, you train four and five times per week. You play competitive matches on a Saturday or a Sunday and often on a Tuesday or Wednesday too.

Football is your life; the thing you always wanted to do. And while your career is the realisation of a childhood dream, there have been lots of sacrifices along the way; sacrifices that got you to where you are today.

When you were younger, while all your friends were out partying and drinking, you stayed in. You didn’t drink, you didn’t smoke, and you didn’t experiment with drugs of any kind. Football came first.

When your friends all got girlfriends, you didn’t. You could never spare the time. On the rare occasions that you did get a girlfriend, the relationship was over before it even began, just as soon as she realised that football came first, second and third in your life.

There’s been no trips to fancy restaurants. You have been on a nutrition-rich diet for the past 12 years. Along the way, you have had numerous operations to patch you up after injuries: some minor; some far more serious.

Yes, you have been rewarded handsomely along the way. You have the nice house and the fancy car. But you have given EVERYTHING to football in general, and to your club in particular.

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